The World

Leftist guerrillas claimed responsibility for the assassination of El Salvador's national fire department chief. The Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front said on rebel radio that a commando unit ambushed Col. Roberto Armando Rivera, 45. It said Rivera's death was justified because "he was a military officer with a clear record of criminal acts and repression." They said he gave courses in psychological warfare and interrogation techniques and was linked to right-wing death squads that terrorized the country in the early 1980s.